by USATAA Communications | May 27, 2016 | USATAA News - Awards |
June Seropian
1932 – 2016
On the evening of Saturday, April 16, 2016, beloved wife and mother June Seropian was called home to be with the Lord Jesus. June was born on June 17, 1932 in Spokane, Washington. She was the youngest of six children in a loving family headed by John Emmett and Elizabeth Hartnett. After graduating high school, June attended college at Gonzaga University, where she was so well loved as to be crowned homecoming queen, before graduating with a B.A. in Sociology in 1955.
Two years later, June was serving as an American Red Cross social worker at Fort Ord, the U.S. Army Post in Monterey, California, when she met her soulmate and husband of 58 years, plastic surgeon Diran “Dee” Seropian. They married in Spokane in 1958, honeymooned at nearby Coeur D’Alene, then settled in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to launch Dee’s medical practice and start a family. They were blessed with four children: Lucine Alise in 1959, Diran Vahn in 1960, Lisa Anne in 1962, and David Jonathan in 1969. Though June was raised a Catholic, her children were baptized at the First Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale. June and Dee later attended All Saints Episcopal Church for many years, where they were both members of the vestry, and she was a facilitator for Bible Study Fellowship.
June returned to graduate school and earned a Masters Degree in Clinical Social Work from Barry University in 1978, before going on to become a licensed psychotherapist certified in Transactional Analysis. June practiced psychotherapy for twenty-five years, treating a variety of clients with her unique blend of warm, loving kindness and razor-sharp insight. She was a skilled healer of hearts and minds who created a safe, yet disciplined clinical environment where she helped her clients to change, grow, and become whole. She was an excellent therapist, well respected by her peers and colleagues, and beloved by her clients.
In 1997, the first of two grandchildren, Katherine Elizabeth, came into June’s life, followed by Sarah Lucine in 2000. A dedicated grandmother, June happily nurtured, fed, and cared for her granddaughters with absolute adoration and devotion. She babysat for them five days a week, and as they got older she was regularly present at their school functions, dance recitals, soccer games, and birthday parties. She loved them and they loved her — a second generation of children blessed by June’s special brand of kindness, warmth and acceptance. Throughout her life, June remained close to her own family as well, especially her last surviving sister Kate, whom she often visited. She was beloved “Aunt June” to many nieces and nephews on both the Hartnett and Seropian sides of the family.
In 2005, June and Dee retired to the vacation home they owned in North Carolina, a beautiful retreat in Lake Toxaway they called “The Treehouse.” This started a new chapter in their lives, one filled with long walks on the golf course, views of the local water falls, and day trips to Brevard, Highlands, and Asheville. Autumn was an especially treasured season, for every year Dee and June were dazzled anew by the changing of the leaves. Their friends and family visited them often, and spent many happy holidays at the Treehouse. June and Dee also regularly travelled to visit their children at their homes in Charlotte, San Francisco and Boca Raton, as well as their own siblings in Spokane and Bethesda.
June’s last and most beloved church family was at the Lake Toxaway United Methodist Church, shepherded by her dear friend Pastor Marcus Dodson. June was a woman of profound faith: a student of the Bible, a lover of Jesus, and a true servant of God. She was a great writer of prayers and psalms, and a joyful practitioner of contemplative prayer, steadfast in her ongoing efforts to deepen her relationship with the Lord.
June was a voracious reader and a gifted author of short stories and whimsical family tributes. She relished watching movies and enjoyed arranging flowers, a pastime for which she had a special gift. She loved the trees, animals, and natural beauty of the Pisgah National Forest and Blue Ridge Mountains, which in her later years served as backdrop for her continuing focus on worship, Bible study, and fellowship with her church friends.
June was treasured for her playfulness, keen wit, kindness, and gentle spirit. She charmed everyone she met, and touched many over the span of her 83 years. She was endlessly loving and nonjudgmental, and generously expressed affection to family, friends, and strangers alike. June was the embodiment of unconditional love; her warmth, gratitude and grace set an example for us all.
June leaves behind a rich legacy of family and friends who will miss her greatly, but who will always carry cherished memories of her love, kindness and acceptance in their hearts. Her body will be laid to rest at Forrest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Ft. Lauderdale, next to that of her daughter Lucine Alise, who passed in 1975. June is survived by her husband, Diran M. Seropian; her sons Diran V. (Nicole) and David Seropian; her daughter, Lisa Seropian; her granddaughters Katherine and Sarah Seropian; and her sister Kathleen Mears.
God bless and keep our Junie. May He hold her in the palm of His hand until we meet again.
by USATAA Communications | Mar 9, 2016 | USATAA News - Awards |
This blog post is about having what you want in life. This is a big presupposition, that we can live the life we want. And really, why shouldn’t we?
Two things can prevent us from living that life. One is that we made decisions early in life, outside of our awareness of today, that still limit us. These decisions were often made at times of stress or trauma, and we re-create some version of that experience unconsciously.
Seems illogical that our early decisions, that didn’t really solve things back then, can still be the source of issues today, and yet, that’s the way we write our life scripts.
Some coaches insist they deal only with the present and future, and don’t get into that stuff from the past.
It’s not about rehashing the past, or even remembering all the details. We can recognize the tracks of the past in the present, and clear them up. Much energy is released when we clear out old decisions.
The second way we prevent ourselves from living the life we want is that we haven’t envisioned it. Life script change is not just letting go of past decisions, it involves making new ones, and then enacting them day by day.
When we made our early decisions, we had no idea of the possibilities our lives could hold. Now we have a chance to explore, learn from others, and create lives based on consciously chosen assumptions.
This whole concept of choice is pretty radical. Whether we have some things in our life that we don’t want, or want some things that we don’t have, this is what we are choosing today.
The TA (transactional analysis) belief that we are all OK includes the idea that we are at choice – if we can get in touch with the internal decision-maker who wanted to stay OK, and made limiting decisions in service of that goal.
That decision-maker is grown up now, and can be the designer of a happy life, with much more knowledge than he or she had back then.
You can access online and in-person courses about TA and other positive psychology methods, if you want to re-connect solidly with that OK self to make new decisions, and maybe help others do the same.
Whether you are new to TA or are already experienced with it, and whether you are learning for yourself or to expand what you can do with your clients, please join USATAA, understand the decisions you’ve made and their impact on your life, and find out what life you really can live.
You may contact Lucy at lucy@syntaxforchange.com
by USATAA Communications | Mar 16, 2009 | USATAA News - Awards |
by Giles Barrow
TA: Education; Schools
I’m OK – You’re OK is arguably the most enduring touchstone of Transactional Analysis (TA).
Founded by Eric Berne in the 1960s, popularised during the 1970s, many readers may recall a distant reference to TA in their professional training or a personal awareness course. Some readers might have come across references to TA more recently, and most readers may be surprised to discover that children and young people around the country are discovering about TA in classrooms. This article provides an account of how TA is experiencing a renaissance in the UK and that the central arena for this resurgence is in education.
For those readers unfamiliar with TA, it is a humanistic psychological framework that, like many such perspectives, offers ways of understanding;
- how people grow up
- how people communicate
- how people see the world
The distinctive features of TA are the core beliefs underpinning the theoretical concepts. To summarise these are:
- that people are essentially OK, hence the ‘I’m OK – You’re OK’ catch-phrase
- that everyone can think; make sense of information, consider options and make choices
- that anyone can change, learn and grow
For the most part TA has been practised in the context of psychotherapy and counselling. Most practitioners in the UK work in a clinical/talking therapy context. However, there have always been practitioners utilising TA in organisational and educational contexts. Over the past five years there has been a noticeable increase in the rate and range of education professionals using TA concepts in their work.
Over the past couple of years I have been involved in sharing TA ideas with hundreds of educators around the country. As a qualified Transactional Analyst in the field of education I am often invited to contribute to professional development both in terms of formal training events, as well as on-going mentoring and team teaching arrangements. Importantly this work has been in both mainstream and specialist contexts. Some examples of TA being used in special schools and units include the following:
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Other articles on TA in education:
Introducing a Meta-Metaphor for Developmental TA
by USATAA Communications | Mar 16, 2009 | USATAA News - Awards |
by Giles Barrow
TA: Education; Schools; Staff development
This article presents, for the first time, some thoughts and ideas about the nature of developmental TA. I think that they are intriguing and I welcome other’s views about them.
BACKGROUND
I have been a member of a training group for the past couple of years. The group comprises practitioners working in the field of education and specifically behaviour support work. A recurring theme in our discussions has been to positively re-frame core TA concepts. In other words, as part of our work we routinely set about using TA ideas to account for
individual/organisational potential, promote growth and, importantly, to make TA widely accessible.
An integral dimension of our approach has been to consider how best TA ideas can be applied in non-problem-focussed ways. In other words, to seek out means of ‘mainstreaming’ TA as an approach for schools to use in developing policy and practice. This maybe quite different from other, more familiar applications of TA. For example, common practice has been to use TA concepts in interacting with children and families identified as vulnerable. Whilst the work of the group includes this type of application, making TA a tool accessible to all remains the priority. In practice, this has led to a range of activities involving directly teaching TA to whole class groups, training staff teams in schools and nurseries and running general parent workshops based on TA.
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Other articles on TA in education:
I’m OK-You’re OK: An Update on TA in Schools
by USATAA Communications | Mar 16, 2009 | USATAA News - Awards |
by James R. Allen
TA: Postmodern TA; Postmodernism; Philosophy
In the right atmosphere, dough quietly begins to rise. Eventually, it becomes recognizable as bread. As a young child in my grandmother’s kitchen, I found this process magical. As a young adolescent, I discovered the even more magical delights of fermentation.
Something similar is happening in the world of transactional analysis. There are a number of quiet but amazing pockets of transformation. In this article, I wish to highlight three:
Multiplicity and Unity
Science and Hermeneutics
Reflexivity and Detached Reflexion
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